THE NEWS AGENTS
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Jude Cowan Montague's creative news-arts show Saturday 2.30pm-3.30pm Resonance 104.4FM
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EXPERIMENT AND JOURNEY
'On a rainy Saturday in cold old February it was a delight to be chatting about music and arty things and having a bit of a sing with Jude Cowan Montague' JUDY DYBLE
She creates poetry which finds the humanity amid the horror of our times.' BILL NEELY
'Jude Cowan Montague has gone where I've never seen a jobbing journalist tread before.' JON SNOW

Saturday, 30 May 2015

'The Act of Literature is a Symbolic Resistance' - Supporting Wole Soyinka for the Oxford Professor of Poetry

Benjamin Zephaniah writes: “In times like these when we are spending so much time and energy looking inwards and being nationalistic, Wole Soyinka will help us reconnect with the world and be more outward looking. We really need him."

Poets and writers Natalya Din Kariuki, Jude Cowan Montague and Gale Burns discuss the work of Wole Soyinka as a poet and activist and explain why 'The News Agents' support his candidacy for the Oxford Professor of Poetry.

The ocean meets the sea in the marketplace ... lost journeys of the mind ... we share the strange and marvellous ...

Jude CM's former tutor Lucy Newlyn is behind the campaign in favour of Soyinka and Jude is one of the nominators.

Election of the Oxford Professor of Poetry: Hall’s English Fellow leads campaign for Wole Soyinka

Friday, 29 May 2015

Image by Pietro Naj-Oleari

Five candidates have been nominated to succeed Geoffrey Hill as the next University of Oxford Professor of Poetry: Simon Armitage, Ian Gregson, Seán Haldane, Wole Soyinka and A E Stallings. Professor Lucy Newlyn (St Edmund Hall Fellow and Tutor in English) is acting as the representative for one of the front-runners, Wole Soyinka. Commenting on the election this morning, she said: “Soyinka has the stature, gravitas and intellectual power to give unforgettable lectures; and he will fulfil all the duties of this post warmly, energetically, and with immense enthusiasm.”

All graduates of Oxford University (an electorate of around 250,000 people, known as ‘Convocation’) are eligible to vote for this highly prestigious chair, and the election has already attracted significant media interest.

149 people nominated Soyinka, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. They include St Edmund Hall’s Principal, Professor Keith Gull, and 25 of the College’s Fellows. A further 24 of the nominators are Hall lecturers or alumni. The JCR (the College's undergraduate student body) also voted in favour of supporting Soyinka’s candidacy when it met last Sunday.

They all believe that Soyinka would be outstanding in this role, capable of inspiring the University community with his published work, his vision of what literature is, and his way of talking about poetry. In a flysheet published in the University Gazette, 12 members of Congregation (including four Heads of House, the Warden of Rhodes House, and the Director of TORCH) wrote: “As the first African elected to this post, Soyinka’s appointment would be an immense historical milestone for Oxford University. He is an inspirational speaker, whose fascinating lectures would attract large, attentive, international audiences.”

He has received endorsements from many high-profile writers and public figures. These include Benjamin Zephaniah, who writes: “In times like these when we are spending so much time and energy looking inwards and being nationalistic, Wole Soyinka will help us reconnect with the world and be more outward looking. We really need him."

Professor Newlyn is delighted with the support Soyinka has received from colleagues in the Hall and across the University, as well as from Aularians: “The Hall is sending out a very strong signal to the electorate. Please join us, and help to make history by voting for Wole Soyinka, one of the world’s greatest living writers, as the next Professor of Poetry at Oxford.”

How to vote

Voting has now opened, and anyone with a degree from Oxford is eligible to vote either online or in person at the University Offices. To do so, you must first register to vote before noon on Monday 8 June (registration takes some time to process, so you are advised to register as soon as possible!). Votes must be cast by midday on Wednesday 17 June.

Monday, 25 May 2015

Looking behind the headlines at dating, relationships, from love markets to sino-punks. Author and journalist Jemimah Steinfeld talks about the generation that have grown up under the one-child policy. Uncovering the sexual and cultural revolution taking place in the world's fastest-growing economic powerhouse. Steinfeld is a freelance writer managing the literature programme at London's Asia House and lived and worked in Beijing as a journalist for the Global Times.

'Steinfeld skilfully weaves lively accounts of her interactions with Beijing's youth with references to government policy and pronouncements, both current and in the recent past, as well as to more detailed sociological studies to produce a highlight readable book which is much more than casual journalism...'Jane Haile,New York Journal of Books

Monday, 18 May 2015

Rebecca Feiner and Jude CM have been taking part in an underground group show in Venice curated by Vanya Balogh.
They took part in the opening, performing and have work in the exhibition for a month.
Rebecca talks to Alice Foster about navigating Venice as a curator/artist and as a visitor, all on low budget.

Jim Racine talks about making bronzes - and his studio in Hong Kong and the UK. The politics of bronze.

Sunday, 10 May 2015

Tamara Erde talks about her 90 min documentary film 'This is my land'
How do the Palestinian and Israeli (Jewish and Arab) education systems teach the history of their nations?
The film follows several Israeli and Palestinian teachers during a school year and the way they teach their national history.Through dialogues and challenges with their students, debates with the ministries curriculum and its restrictions, the viewers obtain the long lasting and profound effect that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict transmits onto the next generation.
http://www.tamaraerde.com/

Aowen JinAowen Jin is a leading Chinese-born British artist, based in London. She discusses her work towards exhibition on perceptions of body image . This project is in collaboration with The Body Narrative and explores how African/Caribbean young women express their identity in London through the colour of their skin. http://www.jinaowen.com/

Sunday, 3 May 2015

Katy Evans-Bush, whose blog 'Baroque in Hackney' was nominated for the George Orwell prize, talks about her new book of essays forthcoming with Penned in the Margins. She is a Salt poet and cultural commenter and her unique blog has been praised by English PEN as "free speech in action". Independent, unscripted discussion may range over such subjects as unhappy hipsters, this cold spring, the fate of the artist and writers being 'as mad as hell and not going to take it any more.'

This blog has been running since 1 June, 2006, when I started it because Jane Holland told me I had to. She was right. It’s gone through many incarnations since then and it has made many things happen. The title was a joke, based on the American pronunciation of ‘Baroque': I had just been made (for only the first time, it turned out) redundant. Its slightly deeper resonance was the sadness of having no money and being in Hackney and loving nice things. But Hackney itself is a nice thing, a lovely and wonderful place with a deep rich history. The blog, I hope, reflects its cosmopolitan heritage.

The aim from the start has been to write about poetry, but also about the kinds of things a person who likes poetry might also be interested in. My ideal reader is myself. In practice this has meant I write in a general way, about culture, with a sort of preponderance of poetry news; and that around the year of the cuts (when I lost my last full-time job) the blog waxed pretty political for a time.

As well as Baroque in Hackney, I’m a partner also in the photographic London website, The London Column, run by David Secombe.

See the Poetry pages for my poetry and so on. I write poetry, and reviews for assorted poetry magazines, and features on social media and self-publishing for MsLexia magazine. Essays and opinion pieces have appeared in books and magazines around the place. In 2010 I was editor of Salt Publishing’s Horizon Review magazine for a year, before it folded.

Hosted by Alice Foster.

'Egg Printing Explained', Katy's second published poetry collection
Salt Publishing, published June 2011